Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Digital Dress Code

Coming to an office near you.

If you thought the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) craze was a headache, just wait until button cameras, smart watches, and spy glasses (already here) are a daily occurrence in the office. Workplace #Wearables will be a huge challenge in the coming years as more devices, clothing and pretty much any 'thing' with a chip or sensor become commonplace in our society. The device explosion with IoT (Internet of Things) will be much larger than any of these mobile phones we carry around.

A couple new reports examine the impact of IoT on businesses.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a report on wearable technology after surveying 1,000 consumers, 314 of which use some form of wearable, as part of "The Wearable Future" report. Some key findings included that 77% of respondents thought that a top benefit of wearable technology is the potential to make employees more productive and efficient. Honestly, when I read that I immediately thought of my boss's hologram standing behind me in my home office watching my work. 70% expect that their office should allow the use of wearables...probably the same folks who wanted to bring their own tablet and 46% felt that organizations should fund wearables rather than the dreaded BYOD. The idea is that if the technology is simple to use and integrates with other devices, that should boost productivity and lift profits. Even so, there needs to be significant investment to ensure the camera shirt buttons can talk to Exchange, ya know.

The biggest concerns, according to PwC, include the risk of security breaches, invasion of privacy, tech dependence, having too many devices and on a more human level, not being able to relate to others or simply looking silly with all those attachments.

PwC also looked at the industries that will capitalize on the wearable market. Entertainment will be more 'immersive and fun'; Social Media gets more real time updates from your clothes; Gaming can be more visually and physically engaging; Advertisers will want the space on your back; Healthcare will track your vitals; and Retail could offer “pleasant, efficient” shopping experiences.

Business Insider recently released a report looking at the device growth They feel that by 2019, IoT devices will more than double the size of the smartphone, tablet, PC, wearable and connected car combined. That's huge. All the software, hardware, maintenance and management of IoT could add $1.7 trillion to the global economy by 2019. They also feel that the main benefit of IoT will be the efficiencies and cost savings by giving the user more control. But, there are sill few standards and even less compatibility so that needs work, not to mention the security risks inherent in these nouns. The processing power, storage, cameras, sensors and everything else will far surpass the USB-stick risks of years past, plus the potential of all this corporate data getting stored in personal clouds could spell big trouble.

And how are all these nouns going to found on the internet? DNS of course! Once all these various wearables hit the office, DNS will be the thing that allows us people to find them threads. I truly feel that DNS will be one of the most strained technologies as more connections happen in the office and will be discussing this trend at the ThingsExpo - which is part of SYS-CON Media's CloudExpo in Santa Clara this week.